Is It Really Ted Kennedy's Senate Seat?

What is it about the Democratic Party and Senate seats?

First it was Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted for abuse of power when he tried to sell President Obama’s former U.S. Senate seat. You might remember that as the governor of Illinois he had the power to appoint a replacement for Obama after the president-elect vacated his former U.S. Senate seat for the White House. Blago was caught when the FBI wiretapped his home and recordings were made of him attempting to sell the seat to the highest bidder.

Children throughout the state of Illinois are getting prepared to celebrate the first annual “Obama Senate Seat Day” on January 29th. It is hailed as the anniversary of Blago’s conviction (just nine days after Obama’s inauguration!). The Chicago corruption machine vows that no child will be left behind without a Senate seat.

Anyway… Something even worse than the Blago disaster is happening. Now a Republican has the ‘nerve’ to run for the Senate seat left vacant by the Democratic Party’s demigod, Ted Kennedy. Except for a gap of two years, this seat has been in the hands of the Kennedy family since 1953, when John F. Kennedy first won it. (Benjamin A. Smith II, a Kennedy loyalist, kept JFK’s seat warm for two years until Ted was old enough to take over.)

Remember how Blago had the power to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy by appointment? Get ready for some heavy-handed irony.

In 2004 Ted Kennedy was instrumental in helping to push legislation that would have prevented Mitt Romney, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, from appointing a replacement to John Kerry’s U.S. Senate seat if Kerry had won the presidential election.

In August 2009 Ted Kennedy made another appeal to change the law once again. At the time Kennedy was terminally ill and worried about his soon be vacated seat. However, Massachusetts now had a governor who was a Democratic Party loyalist, Deval Patrick. Kennedy wanted to change the law so that the governor could choose an interim replacement. This would give the Democratic Party the 60 votes they needed to pass their health care bill. Otherwise the seat would be vacant under the law Kennedy fought to pass in 2004.

The law was duly changed thanks to the Democratic Party’s majority in the Massachusetts Legislature. So they got their 60 votes when a Kennedy loyalist was appointed as the interim replacement. That means blue-blooded legislators can just change the law when they don’t want a Republican to be seated in the Senate and change the law when they want a Democrat seated. The arrogance seemed limitless…

However, it is now the turn of the voters of Massachusetts to strike back. Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for the Senate seat that has been held by the Kennedy family for 54 years, has came from out of nowhere to become a serious contender. This is despite the fact that it is one of the Democratic Party’s most loyal voter districts.

Here is an example of why Brown is making such an impact on the election. In a recent debate the biased moderator from CNN, David Gergen, led with this query;

“Mr. Brown, let me ask you this question, it’s on a lot of people’s minds. You said you’re for health care reform, just not this bill. We know from the Clinton experience that if this bill fails, it could well be another 15 years before we see health care reform efforts in Washington. Are you willing under those circumstances to say, ‘I’m going to be the person. I’m going to sit in Teddy Kennedy’s seat and I’m going to be the person who’s going to block it for another 15 years’?”

Brown brilliantly replied;

“Well with all due respect it’s not the Kennedys’ seat, and it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat. And they have the chance to send somebody down there who is an independent voter, and an independent thinker and going to look out for the best interests of the people of Massachusetts. And the way that this bill is configured, I’d like to send it back to the drawing board because I believe people should have insurance. Not just this particular bill because it’s not good for the entire country. You’re talking about another trillion dollars in costs, a half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts, military people, if you’re veterans, you’re going to have cuts in Tricare, and it’s not good. We need to go back to the drawing board. Nobody has confidence in this bill right now.”

As Gergen admits, he “got stuffed”. The arrogant sense of entitlement that defines such anti-democratic talking heads is becoming unglued.

The Three Wise Men - Part 2

In ‘Part One’ I wrote about Al Sharpton and his divisive role in race relations over the years. There was way too much material to include President Obama and Tiger Woods in the same post. That’s OK because splitting it into two sections works better. There are similarities and eye-opening contrasts between Obama and Tiger that makes it logical to include them in their own post.

The inspiration for this commentary was an article that addressed what is obvious to me since I grew up in an African-American community. Associated Press revealed how African-Americans look unfavorably at Tiger Woods because he chooses to chase after white women.

As revelations of Tiger’s infidelities began to surface; an African-American radio show host, Tom Joyner, lambasted the golf champion:

“Thankfully, Tiger, you didn’t marry a black woman. Because if a sister caught you running around with a bunch of white hoochie-mamas, she would have castrated him...

…The question everyone in America wants to ask you is, how many white women does one brother waaant?”

I understand that this is an attempt at humor, but Joyner went too far. Why is it that fellow radio show host Don Imus got suspended in a similar situation and Joyner gets a free pass?

It is particularly disturbing when you consider that in 2008 Joyner was inducted into The International Civil Rights Walk Of Fame. This is a monument that is housed in the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta. Supporters give it this description:

“The International Civil Rights Walk of Fame was created to give recognition to those brave soldiers of justice who sacrificed and struggled to make equality a reality for all. This extraordinary display has become one of the most visited tourist attractions in the city of Atlanta and has enriched the heritage of the civil rights movement.”

Joyner’s behavior is not what I would expect from a “brave soldier of justice” struggling “to make equality a reality for all”.

Unfortunately, this goes deeper than just a joke. Author, Pearl Jr., writes about issues for African-American women. Her focus is on “exposing the conspiracy to keep black women without love”. It is a part of what she refers to as the “current status quo of the division of power based on race”. Even though she promotes herself as an “Equality Activist” (or maybe because of that), she completely snapped in response to Tiger Woods’ taste for white women. A website, boycottblackmen.com was created to express her frustrations. She asked;

“Are you sick of our black men that leave our race and marry outside our race profiting off the black community while they in turn, turn their backs on us?”

[A screen print of a frame from the website boycottblackmen.com]

Now lets be honest. If a white person set up a website to convince white women not to marry African-American men, would you consider that to be racist? Make no mistake Pearl Jr. is quite clear about her feelings. She goes on to write, “Are you ready to speak up and out in order to ask our black people to stay together; stick together because we need each other?! We are asking our black men to come home because we need you here...helping us rebuild our communities!”

Another author of books for African-American women, Denene Millner, confirms the reservations African-American women have about such interracial relationships. “We’ve discussed this for years among black women… Why is it when they get to this level... they tend to go directly for the nearest blonde?”

Millner claims that she was quoted out of context, however she still admits to saying that statement. Her argument centers on the fact that, “neither I nor a whole lot of the African American women I know are bothered by interracial relationships like we used to be”. She should be commended for moving past her intolerance towards interracial relationships, but it is unfair that she misquotes the journalist who interviewed her (Jesse Washington). He never wrote that Millner was still prejudiced (although she admits that she was in the past). Washington quoted her on how African-American women view such interracial relationships. As Pearl Jr shows, it still holds true whether or not Millner has seen the errors of her own intolerance.

This intolerance is not just limited to African-American women. Books such as John Johnson’s “It Ain’t All Good: Why Black Men Should Not Date White Women” and Rajen Persaud’s “Why Black Men Love White Women” reveal a disturbing portrait of prejudice against interracial relationships. I doubt that Amazon.com would sell a book entitled, “Why White Women Should Not Date Black Men”.

While Millner’s assertion that she had a change of heart is welcome, the manner in which she did it was a bit questionable. This is due to the fact that Millner added the following caveat, “I was neither shocked nor cared about Tiger’s choice in women because he’s never seemed to identify with the “bl” in his “Cablinasian” racial make-up anyway”.

So how is that for an “either you are with us or against us” moment?

“Cablinasian” is a term coined by Tiger to define his ethnicity:

“Ca” – Caucasian
“Bl” – African-American Black
“In” – American Indian
“Asian” – Chinese and Thai

His use of this term has not endeared him to the African-American community. A columnist for FanHouse, Terence Moore, reacted to Tiger’s recent troubles with vindication. He pointed out that the African-American community unconditionally supported other prominent African-American athletes who got into trouble;

“Those other athletes had one of the world’s most supportive casts. They had an overwhelming number of folks in the African-American community standing firmly and loudly behind them -- no matter what. They had Jesse and Al waiting to pounce in the background, if they hadn’t done so already. They had black ministers across the country asking for special prayers in their name. They had folks in barbershops throughout African-American communities talking about conspiracies.

Mostly, despite everything those in black America had seen or heard about the events surrounding O.J., Vick, Iverson and the rest, they had unconditional love.

For Woods, not so much.

Actually, not at all, and Woods has nobody to blame but Woods.

It goes back to April 1997 when he famously took a nine-iron to the face of blacks by telling Oprah Winfrey on her couch that he wasn’t black. He said he wasn’t white, either. He said, given that his father is black and that his mother is Asian, he spent his youth inventing a word for himself called “Cablinasian”.

Just like that, in the hearts of many African-Americans, Woods was on his own…”

Moore makes it clear that he has always felt this way. He proudly dug up an article that he wrote 12 years ago. The piece was written to chastise Tiger when the golfer first publicly used the term “Cablinasian”;

“Tiger, you’re not green. You’re not yellow. You’re not purple. You’re not Asian. You’re not Cablinasian. You’re black.”

Why is it so important that Tiger must declare that he is exclusively African-American? His mother, Kultida Woods complained that, “To call Tiger black is to deny my existence”. She is half Thai, a quarter Chinese, and a quarter Dutch. Tiger’s father is one-quarter Native American, one-quarter Chinese, and half African-American. That means Tiger has more Asian heritage than African-American (one-half Asian, one-quarter African-American, one-eighth Native American and one-eighth white).

With that in mind, it is time to write about Barack Obama. He is a great comparison because Obama is also a prominent American with a mixed race background that includes African heritage. Unlike Tiger, he has exclusively embraced his African ancestry.

Despite the fact that Obama was raised by a loving white family and abandoned at a young age by his African father, he rejects his white heritage. In his autobiography “Dreams From My Father” he declared, “I ceased to advertise my mother’s race (white) at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.”

While we should take into consideration the pain that his abandonment probably caused, Obama revealed that he shrewdly evaluated the political benefits of “race loyalty”;

“I wondered whether, for now at least, Rafiq wasn’t also right in preferring that that anger be redirected; whether a black politics that suppressed rage towards whites generally, or one that failed to elevate race loyally above all else, was a politics inadequate to the task.” (Rafiq was a friend of Obama’s who was a member of the Nation of Islam, it is not believed to be his real name.)

This was how Obama chose the path that ensured he could be defended by “folks in barbershops throughout African-American communities talking about conspiracies” (As Terence Moore put it and conversely Pearl Jr shows that race traitors can also be victimized by conspiracy theories). It insults us in the face of all the progress that we have made in race relations over the years.

On the other hand, this delights Pearl Jr who emphasizes that Obama has a “black wife” and lets out a little cheer to show her approval. In contrast she condemns the sexual preferences of Tiger;

“…Its all these white women, white women, white women and not a black one in the bunch and not even an Asian in the bunch. So Tiger Woods I think that you have been exposed, even to white people you must admit, that Tiger Woods is a White Supremacist. Tiger Woods is racist against black women.

And as far as his buddies Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan is concerned, guess what, they must have their little cult… their little black men with non-black women parties. Black women must not be allowed in their little parties and it needs to be exposed because the racism against black women in the lives of rich black men has gotten out of control.”

So it is no surprise when Johnson Cooper, a 26-year old African American from NY, declares that, “Had Barack had a white wife, I would have thought twice about voting for him”. Obama’s rejection of his whiteness was the key to jumpstarting his political career.

As an unknown community organizer with no roots in the African-American community, Obama decided to join a radical African-American church (Chicago’s Trinity United). It was a calculated move to give him ‘street-cred’ and the politics of the church was exactly what he was looking for. Trinity was also a powerhouse in the community thanks to its well-connected congregation. Oprah Winfrey was the most prominent member. She would prove to be a very useful ally to Obama when he ran for president. A University of Maryland study estimated that Oprah’s support was worth one million votes. After Obama left the Illinois state senate another member of Trinity, Kwame Raoul, filled his seat. That is how the wheels of power turn.

When Obama’s divisive church became a liability during the 2008 presidential campaign, he just dumped it. Since then Obama still doesn’t attend any church regularly and is leisurely “looking” for one to join. Religion served its purpose. Eventually, as his poll numbers continue to plummet, he will have to find another church. In the meantime Obama didn’t attend any religious services when Christmas came along. As an atheist I don’t have any bone to pick with his religious views, it is his intellectual dishonesty that is bothersome.

Today is Three Kings Day. The tradition states that the three kings visit all good children to give them presents. Well, these three kings have given you a lump of coal, but they have taught us a valuable lesson about the sad state of racial relations today. It’s unfortunate that it doesn’t have to be this way. We let it happen.

Feliz Dia de los Reyes…

The Three Wise Men - Part 1

A Story of Race Relations in the United States

American “liberal” ideology relies on race baiting to keep it relevant. To this day playing the race card is a valuable part of the Left’s playbook. That is true despite the disasters which have befallen the hucksters of race baiting politics such as Reverend Al Sharpton. Although he built his reputation as a civil rights activist, Sharpton was successfully sued for defaming the white victim of rape and kidnapping allegations made by an African-American teenager, Tawana Brawley. The accuser’s hoax made such an uproar that the judge was moved to declare;

“It is probable that in the history of this state, never has a teenager turned the prosecutorial and judicial systems literally upside down with such false claims. The cost of the lengthy, thorough and complete grand jury investigation was reportedly estimated at one-half million dollars…

…The total costs and expenses of the lengthy trial before this Court must be staggering. All of this was presumably unnecessary had Brawley come forward to cooperate with authorities. Even absent initial cooperation, once the Grand Jury report was released and it revealed in detail that Brawley had been personally observed by a credible witness crawling into the garbage bag, it would have been most appropriate for Brawley as a young teenager to come forward, admit the allegations were not true and apologize for the pain and upset she had caused Pagones, the Crist family and State Trooper Scott Patterson by her false accusations.”

The punch line was even better;

“At the end of the trial this Court stated, “Let us hope after 10 ½ years, the Tawana Brawley matter is finally laid to rest and we can move forward at last to promote healing and racial harmony.” Unfortunately, the continuing rhetoric by Brawley and her supporters refusing to accept the verdict does nothing to further racial harmony. In fact, in this particular case it is a disservice to the African-American community since it diminishes credibility and may adversely affect other viable complaints. This Court recognizes that it is perfectly proper in appropriate circumstances to speak out against any legitimate racial injustice. In this case, the injustice was against those wrongfully accused of heinous crimes that never occurred. The jury did justice by righting that wrong. Brawley and her supporters have no right to claim that justice was not accomplished by this jury.

These are not rational people that we are dealing with. Take for example, Sharpton’s lawyer and co-defendant in the defamation lawsuit, Alton H. Maddox Jr. His accomplishments are sickening;

1) After filing complaints of racial discrimination against the state of New York, he was ordered to repay the state for legal costs incurred while defending itself from Maddox’s accusations. The judge stated that his complaints had “no factual or legal basis”.

Maddox had filed the lawsuit claiming that he had to apply for permission to represent an indigent defendant, J. Ricardo Burgos, in a murder trial while two white lawyers were appointed to represent Burgo’s co-defendant without having to apply first.

The lawsuit fell apart when the state provided evidence that the two white lawyers did apply to represent their client. However, when Maddox was given an application, he filed a discrimination lawsuit instead of following through the application process. It is another example of using the race card to abuse our justice system.

2) In 1997 a white English teacher filed a complaint with NY’s Commission on Human Rights. The teacher protested that she was discriminated against when she was denied entry to a meeting of the United African Movement, a group led by Maddox. The Commission fined the African Movement $10,000 after it concluded that the teacher was denied entry due to her race. When she was barred from the meeting she was told that, “this place is only for African people”.

3) “Alton Maddox, alluding to Farrakhan’s use of the term “bloodsuckers” to describe Jews and others, said: “You’d better be glad that the only thing we are doing is calling you bloodsuckers.” He added: “This ain’t about ceremony, this is about blood. The price of victory is blood.... You got to spill some blood if you want to be free.”

Despite years of high profile Jewish activism in the Civil Rights Movement and their current high profile activism for “liberal” causes, there has been a great deal of hostility from the African-American community against Jews. During the Crown Heights riots in 1991 Sharpton made the following threat, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house”. Sharpton had called for protests in response to the death of a Guyanese-American child who was killed when a Jew lost control of his car after an accident with another vehicle. In retaliation for the death African-American “protesters” killed an innocent Jewish visitor from Australia, Yankel Rosenbaum. Over a period of four nights the protesters targeted local Jews, businesses and police in an orgy of hate crimes.

In 1995 Al Sharpton was protesting against New York Jews again and there would be even more blood this time. The African-American owner of a Harlem record store, Sikhulu Shange, was facing eviction by a Jewish businessman, Fred Harari. Shange recruited Sharpton for help and he became the most publicly visible negotiator on behalf of Shange.

Protests erupted outside the business owned by Harari (Freddy’s Fashion Mart). The protesters expressed anti-Semitic hate speech and threats of violence such as:

“Get out Jew bastards”

“Bloodsucking Jews”

“Burn and loot the Jews”

Protesters warned that they would have “a coffin for Freddy”

One protester by the name of ‘Shabazz’ exclaimed, “I will be back to burn the Jew store down -- burn, burn, burn.”

Sharpton claimed that he didn’t control the protesters, but he certainly supported them and encouraged people to join the protest. On a radio show Sharpton made this disturbing statement:

“We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business on 125th Street. We’re asking our black community to go down there, and I’m going to go down there, and do what is necessary to let them know that we’re not turning 125th Street back over to outsiders.”

Another protest leader, Morris Powell, used the same radio station to broadcast his own call to action:

“We’re not going to stand idly by and let a Jewish person come in black Harlem and methodically drive black people out of business... We gonna see that this cracker suffer.”

Both the NYC Police Dept and the Human Rights Commission investigated the protests, but never intervened. The results were tragic. One protester, Roland J. Smith Jr., was aroused to commit a massacre at Freddy’s Fashion Mart. He used a handgun to shoot up the store and paint thinner to burn it down. Including the gunman, eight people were killed and four wounded. The death toll topped the slaughter of six people murdered in the Long Island Railroad Massacre, which was yet another racially motivated mass murder perpetrated by an African-American.

After years of threats to murder whites; Colin Ferguson, an African-American born in Jamaica, carried his handgun and a canvas bag full of ammunition onto a Long Island Railroad commuter train. It was a premeditated hate crime. Sharpton was worried that the public perception of “Black and Hispanic dissatisfaction” would be undermined by this incident. He complained that, “the people in the media who attempted to demonize black and Hispanic dissatisfaction by saying this man was inspired or condoned by us when he did a very sick and perverted act is unfair.”

The protection of the leftwing victimhood racket was his main concern. Years later Sharpton would go on to join a campaign on behalf of African-Americans who committed a violent crime against a white person. The Jena 6 were African-American high school students who attacked an unsuspecting white student, Justin Barker, and beat him until he was unconscious.

Activists spread the rumor that Barker had been hurling racial epithets before the attack. However, five of the defendants admitted that such accusations were untrue:

“To be clear, not one of us heard Justin use any slur or say anything that justified Mychal Bell attacking Justin nor did any of us see Justin do anything that would cause Mychal to react.”



[Victim, Justin Barker, in the hospital after being attacked. Photos of two Jena-6 supporters flank his picture. The one to the left is a well meaning, but misguided protester. The one on the right calls for further violence until a perverted brand of justice is achieved.]

Of course our media has short-term memory loss when it comes to anything that contradicts the consensus of our “liberal” upper-class. Talk show host, Bill O’Reilly, is almost universally derided as a rightwing extremist, so check out his contentious but almost amicable exchange exchange with Al Sharpton.

Although Sharpton is generally well respected in our leftwing media, he really comes off as hopelessly biased, while O’Reilly is rational. They discuss the Duke Lacrosse case in which three white athletes from Duke University were falsely accused of rape by an African-American stripper.

The case against the athletes was so weak that the prosecutor became the first sitting district attorney in North Carolina history to be disbarred. It was an “unprecedented and historic moment”, one that was quickly forgotten by our media. Unfortunately the wrongly accused students suffered badly, but they represent acceptable collateral damage to keep alive the leftwing race-baiting machine.

Race relations in our country are beset with difficulties. Unfortunately some prominent leftwing activists provoke race baiting for political profit and throw their uncritical support to hucksters around the country. Times have changed so that all too often it is the race baiting activism of the Left, which intentionally inflames racial tension.

In the next post (Part 2) we will examine how President Barack Obama and Tiger Woods perceive race relations in the United States and the effect that they have had on our nation.

Obama's Feet on the Fire

VIDEO GALLERY OF SHAME

Obama's recent troubles forcing a Public Health Care option on an unwilling public is the result of a badly mismanaged campaign. The lies and bouts of projection that have marked this campaign have clearly revealed the underhanded partisan politics of the Obama Administration.

This arrogant Administration and its Democratic Majority has become too overconfident. Now they have learned that even with their overwhelming sympathy from the media, activist organizations, unions and academia... they still can't tell lies at will.

There were two lies that fell apart amidst public outrage.

The first was an act of projection. Tea Party activists, who have been derided as "Tea Baggers", were accused of being "Astroturf" activists and not a real grassroots movement. Yet it quickly became apparent that many Public Option supporters were in the employment of Obama's "Organizing for America" and ACORN, while union thugs beat up "teabaggers". It is rare to see such a blatant act of projection on such a huge scale.

In this video Out-of-State Astroturf Activists arrive in New Hampshire to support Public Option Health Care!!!:



Patriots chant "Don't Come Back! / Get a Real Job!" at leaving ACORN buses after a townhall in Pennsylvania:



Secondly, the Obama Administration insisted that it was the victim of a nefarious disinformation campaign. Linda Douglass, the Communications Director of the White Office of Health Reform, specifically targeted an article on Drudge Report entitled... "Obama Explains How His Health Care Plan Will Eliminate Private Insurance". Even though Obama is clearly quoted before he was president as a supporter of a Single Payer Health Care System and he also related his strategy for eliminating employer coverage over a period spanning a 10 to 20 years. Watch Ms. Douglass lie through her teeth and actually deny Obama's own words:



You may recall that Ms. Douglass is the woman who set up an email address for Americans to turn in their fellow citizens who disagree with Obama's health care proposals:



It turns out that flag@whitehouse.gov is illegal either way you view it:



While the Democratic Party and their media allies have smeared Tea Party activists as anti-Democratic protesters who lower the debate on healthcare, Ringos Pictures Blog reminds them how badly Anti-Bush protesters lowered the debate during the Bush Administration... with little concern from the media and its allies in the Democratic Party:

http://www.ringospictures.com/index.php?page=20090816

Nancy Pelosi decried the use of Nazi imagery during these protests, but Zombietime Blog reminds her of the use Nazi imagery by Anti-Bush protesters during the Bush Administration, once again, with little concern from the media and its allies in the Democratic Party:

http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=612

Then there is Zombietime's collection of protesters calling for the assassination of Bush:

http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621

The media will not challenge the astroturfing hypocrisy and outright lies of the Democratic Party. It is up to bloggers to spread the word through the Internet, while protesters spread the word on the streets.

Race Baiting 101

The Democratic Party has resorted to its deck of race cards in order to push through the appointment of former LA RAZA member and current nominee for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor.

Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, threatened the Republican Party stating, “I just think that their voting against this good woman is going to treat them about the same way that they got treated as a result of their votes on immigration”. He was backed by activists representing civil rights, Hispanic and women’s groups. In this way he was making it clear that the Democratic Party is using such groups to advance Sotomayor’s nomination, as he fielded an unstated assumption to race bait Republicans.

The choice of a Supreme Court judge nominee, who was once a member of La Raza, was guaranteed to solidify the rank and file of the Republican Party against her. This nomination was designed to paint Republicans as prejudiced and to garner the support of minority groups. It is not the result of the post-partisan and post-racial promises that Obama made on the campaign trail. The choice was made to inflame racial tensions for the benefit of the Democratic Party.

It’s ironic that this nomination took place at the same time as the recent arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. The knee jerk reaction of Gates and the leftwing race baiting machine was to accuse the arresting officer of racism. President Obama quickly weighed in to support his friend (Professor Gates) and condemned the Cambridge Police Department’s handling of the case by saying that they “acted stupidly”.

This led Obama to rant about racial profiling:

“…there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcing disproportionately. That’s just a fact… …And even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently, and oftentimes for no cause, casts suspicion even when there is good cause. And that’s why I think the more that we’re working with local law enforcement to improve policing techniques so that we’re eliminating potential bias, the safer everybody’s going to be.”

Long time race baiting advocate and former prominent Democratic Party politician, Jesse Jackson, chimed in about racial profiling:

“This issue of Dr. Gates being a victim of excessive force and bad judgment is a much bigger subject...This one case could open up the issue of the pervasiveness of race profiling.”

However, the accusation of racial profiling fell apart when it was discovered that the arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, taught a class for five years at the Lowell Police Academy on how to avoid racial profiling.

The politics of race baiting needs to be laid to rest…

Iran Offers Conditions for U.S. Surrender

To chants of “Death to America” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed President Obama’s recent overtures to his country.

In between heaping praise on Iranian culture and expressing verses of poetic love that, “the United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations” – Obama emphasized that, “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist”.

It was instantly declared to be a master stroke of diplomacy that would diplomatically isolate the Iranian Mullahs. Instead Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used the occasion to rally his base and denounce Obama as a liar. The Ayatollah challenged the Obama Administration to back up his flowery words with acts of appeasement when he stated, “Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime? Even the language remains unchanged.”

However, other news that could have diplomatically isolated Iran went unmentioned during Obama’s message. Iranian blogger, Omidreza Mirsayafi, died in prison on the same day as Obama’s rainbow-colored speech. Mirsayafi was jailed for allegedly insulting Iran’s leadership and he died amid claims that the Iranian government was at fault for his death. Bloggers are routinely harassed and jailed in Iran.

Ironically, the blogger was held in Evin Prison, which is the same prison that Iranian-American journalist, Roxana Saberi, is being held. Of course Obama also neglected to mention her in his mating call to the Iranian Mullahs.

Saberi is a brave reporter who defied the Iranian regime when it took away her press credentials in an attempt to silence her. After she was arrested her family didn’t know what happened to her until 10 days later when she finally was able to make a phone call to them. The arrest of Saberi came as the regime began another series of crackdowns on university students. Such oppression may be connected with the upcoming Presidential elections in June.

Saberi’s father publicly stated that, “We told her to hang on, and not give in. The whole world is with her.” Evidently, Obama is not with the whole world on this point. She is an obstacle to his diplomatic overtures.



The Master of Disaster

The Obama Administration is just stumbling around like a chicken without a head. When the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, addressed pseudo-economist Jim Cramer’s critical stance towards the White House’s economic policy he stated, “I think you can go back and look at any number of statements (Jim Cramer) made in the past about the economy and wonder where some of the backup for those are, too”.

Robert Gibbs has a valid point. During the 2008 Presidential Election Cramer was enthusiastic about Obama’s campaign.

On June 22nd of 2008 Jim Cramer appeared on NBC’s, “The Chris Matthews Show”. During that time the show was stumping for Obama’s presidential campaign and so this episode was a veritable Obama-lovefest. During the show Cramer heaped praise on Obama’s economic plans and the following exchange was recorded;

“MATTHEWS: So the Election Day is over, the morning after election, if Obama wins, does the stock market go up?

Mr. CRAMER: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Even though capital gains go up?

Mr. CRAMER: Absolutely. We’re sick of it.

MATTHEWS: Whoa, what a--this is news we’ve made here. Jim Cramer says the market will resound positively to an election by--of Barack Obama.”

Interesting enough, on the day of Obama’s inauguration, the Dow fell in the most dramatic freefall of any other inauguration day in history. Then on March 5th stocks fell to their lowest level in 12 years.

Even as late as December of 2008 Cramer raved about the “Obama Factor”. His ridiculous pro-Obama rants are now quite embarrassing. He boasted that, “When Obama speaks, the market buys, it doesn’t just listen, so listen to Cramer to know where to spend the money!”

The euphoria of the Obama personality cult led to the election of a woefully inexperienced and radically leftwing president. Diplomacy was often held up to be Obama’s strength, but after a comedy of errors the president has been revealed to be too overwhelmed to conduct routine diplomatic affairs.

When British Prime Minster Gordon Brown came for a state visit the Obama Administration neglected to offer a customary press conference and formal dinner as our closest ally is accustomed to. The Administration’s reaction was indignant to the outrage of Britons. A State Department official who was involved in planning Brown’s visit angrily responded that, “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment”.

The thoughtlessness of the Obama Administration seeped into every aspect of poor PM Brown’s visit (it’s a good thing that Great Britain really needs us, my apologies to our friends there). As many bloggers are aware, it is customary on such occasions for leaders to offer each other presents that show good will towards each other. Brown gave Obama a pen crafted from the wood of the 19th Century anti-slave trade ship (which is the sister ship of the vessel that the wood of the president’s Oval Office desk is made of).

Yet Obama gave his counterpart a set of 25 DVD movies, which turned out to be nothing but the first 25 of the American Film Institute’s list of the top-100 American movies. As if that isn’t thoughtless enough… when Brown went home and settled down to watch one of the movies, he discovered that the DVDs were formatted for North American DVD players and cannot be played on DVD players sold in Europe. A message stating, “Wrong Region”, appeared when Brown tried to play them.

Does it get any worse? Incredibly it does… Britons were outraged that two days after snubbing Prime Minister Brown, Obama lavishly hosted former IRA terrorist, Martin McGuinness. British blogger Archbishop Cranmer complained:

“Gordon brown entered the White House through a side entrance and was granted a half-hour chat with the President followed by a working lunch. There was no press conference and the British delegation was limited in numbers.

Mr. McGuinness will walk in through the front door of the White House and be given the full red carpet treatment. It is a de facto State Visit with full retinue and a joint press conference. There shall be two hours of talks and a lavish gala reception at which Mr. McGuinness shall be a guest of honour, seated on the top table.”

And this came after a rare spat of violence in Northern Ireland in which a policeman and two soldiers were murdered in separate incidents.

But don’t forget our illustrious Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and her recent diplomatic blunders…

As if it wasn’t enough to botch her first official visit as Secretary of State to the European Parliament by mispronouncing her counterparts’ names, insulting European sensibilities by saying that American Democracy is older than Europe’s and mocking multiparty democracy... She followed up this embarrassing episode with an “enlightened” visit to Russia.

Complete incompetence was the order of the day when Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a gift meant to symbolize Obama’s diplomatic overtures to the Russian government. She gave him a button that she believed stated “reset” in Russian and expressed her hopes that we could “reset” our relationship with Russia. As she handed Lavrov the gift she said, “We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” He replied that it was incorrect and the button actually stated “overcharged”. So how hard did they work to get one word wrong?

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

I think that it is fair to end this post with the full video footage of our Teleprompter President’s fantasy message to Iran…



The video starts off with Obama saying, “Today I want to extend my very best wishes to all who are celebrating Nowruz around the world. This holiday is both an ancient ritual and a moment of renewal, and I hope that you enjoy this special time of year with family and friends”…

One thing is for certain… Roxana Saberi, an American citizen, could not spend Nowruz with her family and friends because she was locked up in an Iranian prison while her president flirted with her captors.

2008 Government Subsidized Auto Show

Dear Comrades,

What have we learned from the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout? The Democratic Party’s Ministry of Disinformation has taught us that the problem stemmed from the Republican Party’s opposition to regulation and the mortgage industry’s predatory lending.

Of course, neither is true. It was the Democratic Party that blocked all attempts to reform the GSEs and denied that there was any problem, while the Republicans fought to enact new regulatory legislation before it was too late. Additionally, it was the Democratic Party and its allies (like ACORN) that prodded and coerced the mortgage industry into making loans to high risk borrowers.

But just ignore the elephant in the room. Support our glorious seven-digit income automobile executives as they flock to Washington D.C. looking for handouts at the taxpayers’ expense. These robber barons are the vanguard of the revolution.

Everyone knows that all cars are created equal. In the name of justice we must legislate the equality of American automobiles with their foreign counterparts. A “Car Czar” must be appointed to distribute cash to our automobile industry so that we can protect it from the Capitalist evil of competition.

To highlight the urgent need for these measures we present the 2008 Government Subsidized Auto Show. This is a great opportunity to emphasize the many successes of rampant Socialism. All automobile manufacturers are rated according to the Red Star system, with five stars as the highest award.

Zaporozhets:

This vehicle is affectionately known as Zapor, which is short for Zaporozhets. Due to a misfortunate twist of irony zapor means “constipated” in Russian. It’s actually an accurate description of this tiny and cheap car.

When it was first introduced back in the late fifties the sentiment among some Ukrainians was that the car was introduced as punishment by the Soviet Union.

Such a creative chastisement by the Ukrainians’ Communist overlords earns the Zapor two Red Stars!!

Some owners preferred to dispose of their Zapor rather than pay a parking ticket which would be greater than the value of the vehicle.

Trabant:

For about 50 years East Germany was a progressive paradise until the reunification of the country reintroduced Capitalism. The powerful two-cylinder Trabant is a testament to the superiority of Communism over free market economies. Nowhere was that more apparent than in the difference between East and West Germany.

West Germany produced inferior automobiles such as BMW, Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Volkswagen and Audi. On the other hand, East Germany manufactured outstanding automobiles such as the Trabant and Wartburg. East Germany’s auto manufacturers reached a level of craftsmanship that remains untouched these days (Mostly, because they are out of business).

Ladies and Gentleman, Freedom Now is proud to award the Trabant three Red Stars!!! With a plastic body and a hydrocarbon emissions rate of about 10 times that of modern cars, the tiny Trabant makes a strong showing.

Trabant’s Eco-Friendly Chia Car (hat tip to Nanc).

Moskvitch:

Thanks to the theft of an entire German automobile factory after WWII, the Moskvitch was based on the design of the Opel Kadett. Most Eastern European automobiles were based on Fiat designs so this made the Moskvitch unique.

Manufactured at the “Youth Communist League Car Factory”, the appearance and performance of the Moskvitch more closely resembled a tank rather than a car.

The export of the Moskvitch brand to Great Britain actually made a bit of a splash in the early 70s until the Consumers’ Association published an article that questioned the safety of the vehicle. Any fender bender in the imported Moskvitchs could turn into an experience worthy of a ‘slasher flick’ thanks to the incredibly sharp edges of the dashboard and dangerously positioned aluminum handbreak.

Such Soviet engineering boosts the Moskvitch to a four Red Star rating!!!! Congratulations comrades!!!!

A brand new, fully complete Moskvitch just after rolling off the assembly line.

The Yugo:

This was a heroic automobile manufactured in Yugoslavia’s “Red Flag Factory”.

“Every car came with a rear defroster to keep your hands warm as you pushed the car...” A triumph of Communist engineering!!!

During its existence the Yugo earned many enthusiastic reviews. Car & Driver magazine wrote that shifting gears in the Yugo is like “trying to shift a baseball bat stuck inside a barrel full of coconuts”.

Consumers have been happy too. Extra features such as removable doors have boosted the Yugo’s reputation so that no one is surprised to hear that Freedom Now awards the Yugo five Red Stars!!!!!

The Grand Prize Winner, with a souped-up hand warmer!!!!!

Now get out there and make Socialist cars for our Democratic Party bosses!!!!!

Obama's Track Record on Unity

Lipstick on a Politician

Obama’s rhetoric reminds me of a salesman who knows his product, but doesn’t really care about anything more than making a sale. His comments earlier this week are a treasure trove full of irony. For the choice quote of the night he stated;

“In one week, we can choose hope over fear, and unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo.”

It would be comforting to listen to a leader who speaks of “hope over fear” in post 9/11 America, if he was talking about the fear that our enemies have spread… but Obama is not talking about Al Qaeda or the Taliban. He is talking about his fellow Americans as he falseheartedly speaks of unity.




Obama claims to stand for unity while he accuses his opponents of using the politics of fear. He has no right to make such accusations. If Obama didn’t run for president he would still be attending services at his former hate filled church, Trinity United Church of Christ, while denying that it is controversial. He only gave up his church after months of pressure from his critics. So Obama wasn’t able to deliver his closing “unity” speech at his former church.

First Obama lied, issuing denials about what he knew was going on at Trinity:

“Had I heard those statements in the church, I would have told Reverend Wright that I profoundly disagree with them. What I have been hearing and had been hearing in church was talk about Jesus and talk about faith and values and serving the poor.”

Then he admitted the truth:

“Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.”

The disclosure of Rev. Wright’s hateful speeches forced Obama to condemn his pastor’s comments and it was only after this created a public feud between the two that Obama finally left his church. Yet Obama still refused to denounce the divisiveness of his church. As he left his church Obama stated:

“ I’m not denouncing the church and I’m not interested in people who want me to denounce the church.”

Obama refused to condemn his church’s outdated 20th Century Black Nationalism even as he distanced himself from it in the name of political expediency... Black Liberation Theology is the basis of the vision statement of Trinity United and the heart of its philosophy. It is a sick creed of reverse racism. James Cone is the leading advocate of this theology and has described its theories and his feelings towards whites in the following manner:

“Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.”

“Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him.”

“What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.”

“What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world.”

“Whether the American system is beyond redemption we will have to wait and see. But we can be certain that black patience has run out, and unless white America responds positively to the theory and activity of Black Power, then a bloody, protracted civil war is inevitable.”

“All white men are responsible for white oppression. It is much too easy to say, “Racism is not my fault,” or “I am not responsible for the country’s inhumanity to the black man”...But insofar as white do-gooders tolerate and sponsor racism in their educational institutions, their political, economic and social structures, their churches, and in every other aspect of American life, they are directly responsible for racism...Racism is possible because whites are indifferent to suffering and patient with cruelty.”

Some of the quotes that Rev. Wright made infamous are included below:

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America’? No, no, no, not God Bless America. God damn America — that’s in the Bible — for killing innocent people. God damn America, for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America, as long as she tries to act like she is God, and she is supreme.”

“The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.”

Obama claims to be a uniter, but the reality is that this election has forced him to distance himself from his divisive past. We are the ONES who have waited for him to catch up to the 21st Century. Not the other way around as he so falsely suggests.

Before Obama had focused on his ambition to be president, he wrote an autobiography in 1995 entitled “Dreams from My Father, A Story of Race and Inheritance”. This book honestly related his feelings on race and reveals the motivation that led Obama to join such a militant black church. Although his mother was white, he rejected his whiteness and sought to embrace his black heritage exclusively. This was despite the fact that in his teenage years he was raised in a loving white family and experienced no notable acts of racism from whites.

His book, “Dreams from My Father”, describes this transformation. In his own words he decided to “never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself.”

He completely rejected his “whiteness”. As he wrote, “I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.”

My aim isn’t to prove that Obama was (or is) a racist, it is to show that for much of his life his worldview was divisive. I used his own words to map out the ‘us against them attitude’ that drew him to Trinity United Church. Once again from his autobiography he wrote, “To admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self-hatred.”

Obama contemplated Black Nationalism as a political tool overriding all other concerns. Again, in his own words, “I wondered whether, for now at least, Rafiq wasn’t also right in preferring that that anger be redirected; whether a black politics that suppressed rage towards whites generally, or one that failed to elevate race loyally above all else, was a politics inadequate to the task.” He settled this question by joining Trinity and adopting the anger of Black Nationalism as his identity. (Rafiq was a friend of Obama’s who was a member of the Nation of Islam, it is not believed to be his real name.)

I do not accuse Obama of being a Muslim. He was the member of a church that spread a message of hate. There are good Christians and there are bad Christians. Just as there are good Muslims and bad Muslims.

So on what basis does Obama champion the cause of unity? In 2007 the National Journal’s annual vote ratings gave him the most liberal voting record in the Senate. Its interesting that many times Obama uses the word “we” when he is really referring to himself. On Super Tuesday he gave one of the worst speeches that I have ever heard. At one point Obama said, “we are the ones that we have been waiting for”. He states these empty slogans as if they were biblical quotes. I don’t need Obama, McCain or any politician to change my life. Change is constant and my life doesn’t revolve around Obama. Its no accident that at Obama’s rallies his crowd chants “Obama, Obama, Obama”, but at McCain rallies his crowd chants “USA, USA, USA”. Obama’s cult of personality comes at the expense of everything else.

On the other hand McCain actually fulfils a requirement that unity demands. He is not afraid to cross the political aisle. McCain even worked closely with Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy on immigration reform. That is a good example of a Conservative (however moderate he may be) reaching out across party lines to someone widely regarded as an extreme liberal in American politics. McCain is also not afraid to buck his own political party, as he proved when he forced the Bush Administration to accede to the McCain Detainee Amendment. It was a measure to enhance the rights of detainees, which incurred the wrath of many Conservatives.

Obama has no similar credentials, but he still promotes himself as a uniter when all he represents is division. The politics of fear comes from the discharge of suicide bombs and hijacked airliners. They are the tools of our enemies. Obama would be better served by targeting these terrorists with his accusations and not his fellow Americans.

Storm Clouds on the Horizon

Cindy Sheehan is running for Congress against the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Ironically, Pelosi has been an outspoken opponent of the Iraq War and so has Sheehan. Conservative observers have been amused by the friction between the two leftwingers. According to Sheehan’s website:

“Nancy Pelosi is a politician. She declared opposition to the war in Iraq, but consistently votes to fund it. She has offered no analysis of the real reasons motivating the war in Iraq. She voted in favor of invasive wiretapping and immunity for corporations that engage in illegal wiretapping. She has initiated no legislation to fix our ailing schools, health care facilities, the housing crisis, etc. She has accepted money from the following corporations, to name a few of the many: Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Comcast Corp, and Wells Fargo Bank.”


Over the years Bay Area radicals have been expressing their discontent with Pelosi. The feeble Democratic-controlled Congress has been powerless to stop President Bush from escalating the Iraq war and winning a pivotal battle against the brutal insurgents. Obama took a stab at reducing the U.S. role in Iraq, but failed. He didn’t have much time to spend on his attempts to hijack the progress made by the Surge because much of his short career as a U.S. Senator has been consumed with his presidential campaign. He has only been a U.S. Senator since 2005 and has been campaigning for almost two years.

In any case, the same forces that Pelosi’s anti-Iraq policy helped unleash in her raw pursuit of power have boomeranged against her.

In March 2007 CodePink, the radical “antiwar” group, organized a protest they called ‘Camp Pelosi’. It was a round the clock vigil in front of Pelosi’s San Francisco home. The protestors demanded that Pelosi cut the funding of the Iraq war. It became a string of on-and-off protests that continued to dog Pelosi for a long time. Additionally, CodePink wasn’t satisfied with just harassing Pelosi at her home so they took to following her to political events and harassing her there. Since CodePink found that protesting President Bush has been ineffective they started to target Democrats like Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. Gael Murphy, a co-founder of the group, claims that their efforts targeting the Democratic Party have made a difference. During the primaries she said, “We’ve gotten to a place now where Hillary and Obama are falling all over each other to be the leading peace candidate”.

Another co-founder of CodePink, Jodie Evans, has become a bundler for the Obama campaign. She has pledged to raise between $50,000 to $100,000. CodePink’s most visible leader and close Sheehan ally, Medea Benjamin, bragged about the influence that their radical group has on Obama. She declared that, “we have the ability to push from the inside and the outside. And it is being right here in this kind of place and places like this around the country that are the antidote to the people who are pushing Barack Obama to be quote ‘centralist’, which means be a warmonger”.

While CodePink has aggressively attacked leaders of the Democratic Party such as Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, they have been relatively supportive of Obama. CodePink has set up two watchdog groups to attack Pelosi and Clinton, ‘Pelosi Watch’ and ‘Listen Hillary’. Even though CodePink’s grievances with Pelosi and Clinton also apply to Obama, they have been willing to overlook these similarities. Instead CodePink claims to be willing to work with Obama on the same issues that CodePink viciously attacks Pelosi and Clinton. This sentiment is shared with many leading leftwing radicals.

An open letter published in The Nation declares support for Obama and warns that the signatories of the letter will challenge him on issues that they don’t share. One of these issues is “the escalation of the US military presence in Afghanistan”. The letter is signed by prominent leftwingers like Phil Donahue, Juan Cole, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Christopher Hayes (the editor of The Nation) and many others... especially JOURNALISTS.

So what will happen if Obama becomes president? CodePink is concerned that Obama is influenced by “centralists” who take a more favorable stance towards the use of military force. On the subject of Afghanistan they have cause for concern. Both presidential candidates favor increasing the U.S. troop presence in that country. The battle in Afghanistan is often referred to as the “Good War” and no frontrunner in any presidential election has opposed it.

Yet the “antiwar” lobby has been firmly against it. At the very first instance of U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan back in October of 2001, the “progressive” website Common Dreams declared the war a failure. In an editorial, Marion Winik (a commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered”) stated, “Whatever they say, I think we've already lost”. Common Dreams may be a radical publication, but look at the many mainstream writers and prominent Democratic Party loyalists that have graced its pages; Jesse Jackson, Adriana Huffington, Naomi Klein, Paul Krugman, Michael Moore, Ted Rall and many others.

During the 2008 Election the Left has united around Barack Obama. However, if he is elected president, Obama will have a great deal of difficulty maintaining this fractional alliance under his Afghan policy. After the 2004 election, when the Democratic Party stood stunned at its losses in the Congressional and Presidential elections, there was a burning reaction to get even. The same thing can happen to the Republicans in 2008. It is easy to be the opposition party, you merely have to be contrarian. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the partisan warfare during the Clinton Administration shows that the Republicans are just as good at this game.

Since the Republican Party is almost universally united behind the war in Afghanistan, Obama will miss out on a reliable support base on this issue. These bitter Republicans will be consumed with a desire for revenge and dreams of power, much like the Democratic Party has been for the last eight years. Meanwhile Obama’s supporters will be ideologically divided over the Afghanistan War.

I take no pleasure in this partisan bickering. During the Clinton Administration I supported the President against the partisan attacks that he suffered from. If Obama is elected president I will support him on his Afghanistan policy, if he follows it as he has already presented it. My overriding concern is victory over our fascist enemies. I would rather have a leader that I could be confident in, but if Obama wins the election he will have to do in the meantime.

There are two issues that will be of the utmost importance for our next president and Obama is problematic on both issues.

1) The War in Afghanistan
2) The Economy.

Obama’s weak ability to prosecute the Afghan War is scary enough, but he has also taken over $100,000 from Fannie May and Freddie Mac as they slid into a collapse that required a costly bailout. At the same time McCain warned against the problems of the GSEs. When Obama’s serious lack of experience is also taken into account you have to conclude that there is no HOPE for the prospect of an Obama Administration. It’s only an empty slogan...

We Are The One

Did Obama Write The Original Version of “We Are the World”?






A controversy has erupted over claims that Obama may have written the original version of the hit song, “We Are the World”. Certain sources within the Obama campaign, who wish to remain anonymous, have been leaking a story of dissent within Obama’s staff. These close advisors feel that Obama should come out and take ownership of the song. Obama allegedly wrote it when he first became a community organizer in Chicago’s South Side.

Other cautious advisors fear that such a revelation will reveal that Obama’s ambition to be the messiah stretched back much farther than his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. Those aides in favor of disclosing Obama’s authorship feel that voters will behold, “a light that will shine through their windows, they will experience an epiphany and they will suddenly realize that they must go to the polls and vote for Barack”.

The original version of the song has been leaked to the press:

“We Are Obama”

There comes a time when we need a certain call
When the world must come together as the One
There are people dying
Oh, and it’s time to lend a hand to Obama
The greatest gift of all

We can go on pretending day by day
That someone, somehow will soon make a Change
We’re all a part of Obama’s great big family
And the truth - you know he is all we need

(CHORUS)
We are the One, we are the children
We are the Change we’ve been looking for
so let’s start Believing
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
It’s true we’ll make a better day
When we make Obama the One

When you’re down and out
There is still Hope for all
If you just Believe
There’s no way we can fall
Well, well, well, let’s realize
Our time for Change can only come
When we stand together as the One

(REPEAT CHORUS & FADE INTO GROUPTHINK)

For reference here is the version edited by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson:

“We Are The World”

There comes a time when we need a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
Oh, and it’s time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all

We can’t go on pretending day by day
That someone, somehow will soon make a change
We’re all a part of God's great big family
And the truth - you know love is all we need

(CHORUS)
We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
so let’s start giving
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
It's true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me

When you’re down and out
There seems no hope at all
But if you just believe
There’s no way we can fall
Well, well, well, let’s realize
That one change can only come
When we stand together as one

(REPEAT CHORUS AND FADE)





Obama Bootcamp:

Navigating The Media Spin

Back in June a frustrated correspondent from the NY Times complained that there wasn’t enough news stories about the Iraq War…

“According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of the war in Iraq has been ‘massively scaled back this year’. Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq war coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The ‘CBS Evening News’ has devoted the fewest minutes to the war, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s ‘World News’ and 74 minutes on ‘NBC Nightly News’. (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.”

The real reason for the journalist panic rears its ugly head later in the article. Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News, relates how she begged to embed with some Navy Seals only to have a CBS producer tell her that, “One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform”. But all is not lost. Don’t be alarmed by the prejudice against our troops that comes from a big shot at CBS. Its not just prejudice that distorts our media, its an agenda. As the article continues:

“In the follow-up phone interview, Ms. Logan said the producer no longer worked at CBS. And in both interviews, she emphasized that many journalists at CBS News are pushing for war coverage, specifically citing Jeff Fager, the executive producer of ‘60 Minutes’. CBS News won a Peabody Award last week for a ‘60 Minutes’ report about a Marine charged in the killings at Haditha.”

You may remember the headlines that this case made several years ago. Congressman John Murtha was infamous for making the false accusation that the marines involved in this incident, “murdered these Iraqis in cold blood”. Despite the fact that the marines were convicted in a ‘trial by media’ before the investigation was even completed, all of the defendants except for one have been cleared of all charges (the last defendant’s charges have been reduced and his trial has been postponed). So as the U.S. is winning the war in Iraq, Ms. Logan is excited about an executive producer like Jeff Fager who keeps alive the media’s hostile view towards U.S. troops. It’s no wonder why Ms. Logan bemoans the fact that the media hasn’t released enough pictures of dead American soldiers when she bizarrely ties that statement to her assertion that our soldiers are forgotten by the public. As if plastering pictures of dead American soldiers everywhere is something that our troops would benefit from, rather than benefit the “antiwar” lobby.

The McCain Doctrine & Republican Revolt

Now that the Surge has dramatically succeeded above expectations don’t expect the media to continue dubbing it, “The McCain Doctrine” or “McCain’s Plan”. Over a year ago the media advocated a meme that McCain was putting himself at risk for being such a staunch advocate of the Troop Surge. This came at a time when the Surge was controversial so there was some truth to this sort of analysis. However, to create a scenario of impending doom that supports this conclusion, the media misled the public about the level of Republican dissent against the war.

In July of 2007 the L.A. Times tried to paint McCain as being slowly isolated from even his fellow Republicans on the issue and that the Republican Party was looking to redefine itself away from President Bush’s Iraq policy:

“As President Bush struggles to maintain support in Congress for his Iraq ‘surge’ strategy, the three leading Republican presidential contenders have been quietly backing away from any commitment to continue the buildup.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson have made it clear that their original support for the escalation does not mean they are signed on to keeping the current 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, even as they have laid out hawkish positions on other aspects of foreign policy.

Their recent moves underscore the president’s growing isolation on Iraq as the GOP begins searching for a post-Bush foreign policy. The shifts also distance the three top contenders from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the former front-runner who Tuesday reaffirmed his commitment to the troop escalation.”

Over a year later it is obvious that this article was pure partisan bullshit. All of these former candidates have faithfully supported the Surge and continue to support the President’s Iraq policy.

You don’t hear much about the alleged Republican Revolt anymore, but over a year ago it was a vital part of the Democratic Party’s strategy that was used to manipulate public opinion with an unbalanced viewpoint of what was really going on. After a suicidal ousting of Senator Joe Lieberman from the Democratic Party during the 2006 elections, an appearance of Democratic Party unity and Republican Party division was created by Democratic Party strategists and a compliant media.

In July 2007 the House passed the “Responsible” Redeployment from Iraq Act (HR 2956), which was designed to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq in less than a year. This legislation was proposed about a month after the Surge officially began. The Redeployment Act was a desperate attempt to destroy the Surge before it had a chance to run its course.

In many cases when anti-Iraq policy legislation is proposed, the Democratic Party has used a handful of sympathetic Republican Party politicians as sponsors or authors to create a false bipartisan appearance. The Redeployment Act had three Republicans who were promoted as cosponsors (out of 43 total cosponsors); Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. However, the voting record shows that only four Republicans voted in defiance of their party to pass this legislation. Unsophisticated observers might still feel that this justified the media’s assertion of a revolt within the Republican Party, but the media and general public missed the fact that 10 Democrats defied their own party by voting against the measure!

So despite all claims of a Republican Revolt, more than double the amount of Democrats revolted against their own party and the top “three” presidential candidates from the Republican Party have remained steadfast supporters of President Bush’s Iraq policy. As the minority in Congress, the Republican Party needed to remain loyal to Bush in order to beat back the many legislative attempts by the Democratic Party to reverse the Surge. While the Republicans brilliantly maintained party discipline amid an unpopular war, the Democrats were not as successful.

The hysterical chatter of a Washington Post columnist (Harold Meyerson), who called the GOP a bunch of “gutless wonders”, reveals that the Republican Revolt was just a creature of wishful thinking by partisan journalists and the Democratic Party. He displayed some extreme bitterness towards the few dissenting Republicans who supported the Democratic Party on this issue, but failed to change our Iraq policy. Its as if he wouldn’t be happy with them unless they became suicide bombers…

“They have seen the folly of our course in Iraq. The mission, they understand, cannot be accomplished. The Iraqi government, they discern, is hopelessly sectarian.

In wisdom, they are paragons. In action, they are nullities. Perhaps they are simply farsighted. They have seen the problem with Nouri al-Maliki’s administration in faraway Baghdad. They seem unable to see the problem with the Bush administration at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Lugars and the Warners seem to share with many of their Democratic colleagues a common assessment of our presence in Iraq: It has become an unfocused and costly occupation in a land beset by civil war. We should, in good order, pull back, leaving behind only what we need to deter jihadists who threaten us.”

This article is worth reading in its entirety in order to digest the full extent of the conformist, bullying tactics of those who were determined to defeat the Troop Surge. It is mind boggling to imagine that intelligent people once thought that the withdrawal of the majority of U.S. forces from Iraq would lead to conditions that could deter jihadists in that country. At the same time those who defended such a highly unpopular policy as the Surge were accused of being gutless. A year later it is now obvious that those whom Meyerson labeled as gutless were actually very brave to help enable the enormously successful Surge operation against all conventional wisdom and savage criticism.




Leadership & the Mortgage Crisis

If you want a great example of leadership then look no further than Senator John McCain’s stance on the Surge. It was pointed out that his enthusiastic support for this unpopular issue could have hurt his presidential campaign, but he took the risk because he felt that it was worth taking.

Both leading presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain support the recent $700 million dollar bailout package for the financial industry that passed last Friday. Yet McCain has taken a beating for temporarily suspending his campaign in order to get House Republicans to support the bill. Critics have labeled his effort as grandstanding, but just like the Surge it shows that McCain is willing to take risks that come at his own expense for the sake of the country.

As Obama takes a back seat on the issue and can only hope for change, he and his fellow Democratic Party partisans blame their Republican counterparts for the current financial crisis. At this point in the election the media’s collective memory only extends to whatever benefits Obama’s presidential campaign. Its up to bloggers to force the media to cover more than just the Democratic Party’s talking points.

Back in 1999 the NY Times wrote about the pressure that Fannie Mae was receiving from the Clinton Administration to take on more risky loans. It was an ominous sign of the negative influence that the Democratic Party was to play in this crisis:

“Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.”

Ironically, the Democratic Party has taken to blaming the crisis on the Republican Party’s support for deregulation, but the American people are not getting the whole story of what really happened. In 2003 the NY Times relates the following:

“The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.”

Guess who opposed President Bush’s attempt to enforce meaningful reform of the regulation of these GSEs?… Almost any blogger knows that the Democratic Party joined ranks to fight it. Get a load of this infuriating statement from Rep. Barney Frank, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee:

“These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Rep. Melvin L. Watt, a fellow Democrat, continued to display the same attitude of downplaying the risk of subprime lending that got us into this mess in the first place:

“I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing.”

Attempts to pass this legislation were thwarted along partisan lines as the Democratic Party solidly voted against any attempt to reform the regulation of the GSEs. However, the Republican Party continued to struggle with the obstructionist Democratic Party voting bloc. In May of 2006 John McCain addressed the Senate about a different regulatory reform bill:

“For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.”

When the Obama campaign accuses McCain of being against regulation of the GSEs and that Obama warned about the potential problems of the financial crisis in 2007, you have to wonder how biased the media is in order to understate such an outrageous lie. The resistance of the Democratic Party to such regulation for years is lost in the memory hole. By 2007 it was obvious even to the staunchest supporter of risky loans like Barney “Not facing any kind of financial crisis” Frank that the Democratic Party could no longer deny that subprime lending had created a disastrous situation. On the other hand, McCain had cosponsored legislation going back to September 2003 calling for regulation of the GSEs.

Interesting enough, Opensecrets.org compiled a list of the top recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions over the last 19 years. Its no surprise that Democrats top the list; but as a freshman U.S. Senator, Barack Obama incredibly came in third place even though he’s only been in office for less than four years! As number three on the list he actually beat out Barney Frank who’s been in office for the entire 19 years that the survey covers. So if Obama was so concerned about the root causes of this crisis; why did he take so much money from these two GSEs in such a short period of time, even as the financial crisis unfolded into catastrophic proportions?

Almost all legislation attempting to reform the regulation of the GSEs was drafted, sponsored and voted for by Republicans. In addition, many Democrats are on record defending Fred and Fannie, going as far as denying that there was a problem with them.

H.R.1409: Secondary Mortgage Market Enterprises Regulatory Improvement Act - Apr 4, 2001

H.R.2575: Secondary Mortgage Market Enterprises Regulatory Improvement Act - Jun 24, 2003

Thank you to Rep. David Scott (D-GA), who was the only Democrat to cosponsor the bill out of 21 cosponsors. Unfortunately, this bill was not able to make it out for a vote.

H.R.2803: Housing Finance Regulatory Restructuring Act of 2003 - Jul 21, 2003

S.1508: Federal Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2003 - Jul 31, 2003

John McCain was a cosponsor of this bill.

S.190: Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 - Jan 26, 2005

John McCain was a cosponsor of this bill.

H.R.1461: Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005 - Apr 5, 2005

The bill made it out of the House, but the vote was more or less along party lines with the majority of Democrats voting against it. Thank you to the only two Democratic Representatives who cared enough to vote for the bill… Sam Farr (CA) and Gene Taylor (MS). 208 Republicans and only 2 Democrats voted Aye.

H.R.509: Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 1461) to reform the regulation of certain housing-related Government-sponsored enterprises, and for other purposes. - Oct 25, 2005

Passed by the House. 220 Republicans and 0 Democrats voted Aye.

Then after years of denials by the majority of the Democratic Party… all of a sudden in 2007 new reform legislation is introduced by Barney Frank, a politician who previously stated the following during a House Financial Services Committee hearing addressing regulatory reform in 2003:

“I worry, frankly, that there’s a tension here. The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios.”

Then look at this favorable exchange between Frank and executives from Fred and Fannie which transpired at another hearing. It is unbelievable the amount of deference that Frank shows them when he should be grilling them instead:

“Rep. Frank: Let me ask [George] Gould and [Franklin] Raines on behalf of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, do you feel that over the past years you have been substantially under-regulated?

Mr. Raines?

Mr. Raines: No, sir.

Rep. Frank: Mr. Gould?

Mr. Gould: No, sir. . . .

Rep. Frank: OK. Then I am not entirely sure why we are here… I believe there has been more alarm raised about potential unsafety and unsoundness than, in fact, exists.”

So this is the same politician who introduced the following bill:

H.R.1427: Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2007 - Mar 9, 2007

Many long-term Democratic deniers voted for this bill, allowing them to be so duplicitous that a year later they would claim to have warned the American people about the subprime crisis and that they are champions of regulatory reform of the GSEs. This is despite the fact that only a handful of Democrats were in favor of reform before this bill and the absolute majority of Republicans were in favor. The Democrats only jumped ship after it was no longer credible (even in a compliant media) to deny the problems with regulating the GSEs. Incredibly it is John McCain who is being painted as a flip flopper on this issue.

Besides Barney Frank, another Democrat who voted for the 2007 bill (H.R.1427) was Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY). This “Johnny-come-lately” stated the following during the same hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee in 2003 that Barney Frank issued his bogus denials:

“…I am just pissed off at OFHEO [Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight] because if it wasn’t for you I don’t think that we would be here in the first place. And Freddie Mac, who on its own, you know, came out front and indicated it is wrong, and now the problem that we have and that we are faced with is maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place, you have given them an excuse to try to have this forum so that we can talk about it and maybe change the direction and the mission of what the GSEs had, which they have done a tremendous job…”

In addition to Frank and Meeks there were other “Johnny-come-latelies” who voted for this bill. Take Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr. (D-MO) for instance. At a 2004 hearing concerning allegations of accounting and management failures by Fannie Mae, he was adamant in his defense of FM:

“…I find this to be inconsistent and a rush to judgment. In informal conversations with the executives from Wall Street and individual large brokerage houses, I get the feeling that the markets are not worried about the safety and soundness of Fannie Mae, as OFHEO says that it is. But of course, the markets are not political…”

Clay’s best sound bite of the evening was when he declared, “this hearing is about the political lynching of Franklin Raines (the ex-Fannie Mae chief executive officer)”. Hmmm… Eventually Raines was forced to pay a settlement of $24.7 million in that accounting scandal. In addition, Fannie Mae paid a $400 million civil fine in a settlement with OFHEO and the Securities and Exchange Commission back in 2006. Clay’s accusations of political partisan politics were clearly acts of projection, as revealed by his hypocritical defense of a guilty party for political purposes.

Incredibly, the media reports that McCain is losing in the polls due to the financial meltdown caused by the mortgage crisis. Yet he has a record going back to 2003 of cosponsoring legislation to reform the regulation of the GSEs responsible for this mess. At the same time the Democratic Party has a solid record of opposing such efforts and in Obama’s short experience in the U.S. Senate he has taken an enormous amount of money from them.

Lacy Clay said that the allegations of misdeeds by the GSEs were politically motivated. This is how the Democratic Party’s attempt to cover up financial mismanagement by the GSEs led to unwarranted attacks on the Republicans who only wanted the truth. See the following quote from an article published back in 2004 when Fannie Mae’s CEO Franklin Raines was under fire. The author, Henry Blodget, is an Obama supporter who sometimes writes for Slate.com and the Huffington Post. Check out how he twists and turns in order to protect Raines:

“…Maybe … or, maybe, more likely, he (Franklin Raines) is the same man of discipline, intelligence, honor, and integrity that a half-century of actions and words suggest. If so, we need another explanation for the Fannie proceedings and the assault on Raines.

The simplest, and most conspiratorial, is that the Fannie investigation represents a Republican payback for Enron and Halliburton. Conservatives are delighting in the gutting of Raines and Fannie Mae—a Democratic boss of a Democratic-leaning company. Former Fannie CEO James Johnson, who got some of the bonuses OFHEO criticized, has also been short listed as a possible Kerry treasury secretary. The accounting investigation, if nothing else, has probably made both Raines and Johnson untouchables to a Democratic president.

My fellow bloggers you have every reason to be angry with the media, but please keep in mind that they are eager to smear and misrepresent your voice. They are very protective towards Obama when it comes to what they can construe to be smears. However, they are quick to ignore the torrential amount of smears hurled at McCain and Palin. Obama has never suffered from an attack as vicious as Sarah Palin had to put up with. Nothing compares to accusations that she lied about giving birth to her last child Trig. The assertion that her husband had sex with her daughter and that Trig was born as a result of incest is the worst campaign smear that I have seen in a long time. Yet it is Obama who is continually painted as a victim.

The extent of the media memory hole is proof that a Representative Democracy is only as healthy as those who participate in it. So spread the word and keep our country strong!!!